Unzipped (11 page)

I stay in hospital for one night, almost two, due to how long it takes to discharge me. It’s okay, I understand procedure. When I get home Mark has already had the removalists around. Fair enough. He always said it never felt like his house. Mum left the house to Ruby and me and I bought her out. Ruby bought a two-bedroom flat. It reeked of the seventies—orange and green, a macramé owl hanging just inside the front door—and she hasn’t changed a thing.

An oil stain in the garage. His gorgeous, sky-blue VW Karmann gone. The spare room is empty except for the footprints in the carpet left by the multi-gym. One toothbrush. No shaver, no shaving cream, only half the towels in the cupboard.

He’s taken our photos. The fridge is covered in Sellotape remnants, vacant, rectangular spaces. Cameron, Lachlan, Jasmine gone. Eucalyptus oil will remove the residue-sticky
reminders of our life, but I’m not ready to release the gummy twist of guilt every time I open the door.

At the electrical wholesalers, BJ is close behind me, loaded with boxes—wok, blender, toaster, kettle. She’s proving she’s essential.

‘He was never home to cook. I suppose he’s punishing me.’ We unload at the counter. ‘How did this get in here?’ A Darth Vader clock/radio and CD player.

‘For the kitchen,’ BJ grins. That dimple is a killer.

‘For you then.’

Plastic, movie kitsch in my kitchen. What next? BJ smacks a kiss onto my lips, my first at a service desk. I blush. But not as much as the woman who is serving us.

A full replacement of kitchen appliances is the price of my adultery. I push my PIN into the keypad, press enter. ‘Fair enough, Mark.’

The space his body took up is missing. So is the sound of his bare feet down the hallway. I’d listened to it for years, every time trying to understand why his bare-feet walk was so much louder than when he was wearing shoes.

His body in my bed.

His voice on my phone.

Space in my email and on my phone.

Why can’t our friends be available to both of us? Do a couple of months of less than brilliant behaviour erase twenty years of friendship?

I try to talk to Ruby but she’s not picking up.

Taylor says she’ll be round as soon as she can.

Other people find the time.

‘Peta? You’re disgusting.’

Alex and Rob on speaker. I let them talk. They’ll say their bit and leave me alone. I deserve it.

‘We don’t want you to be the baby’s godmother. We don’t want to see you again. Nobody does. Cheating on Mark is bad enough, but with a woman.’ Rob is in the background, barracking. ‘You’re going to hell,’ she says.

No, I don’t deserve this.

‘Is this what Jesus would do if he had a phone?’

‘We hope you and that filthy bitch rot, Peta.’

Okay, that’s enough.

‘Alex, ask Rob about the last golf trip. Ask him which DVD they watched and who watched it for the longest.’

Maybe my friends think the stink will wear off, fasten itself to them, make them look at their own relationships.

I hope they’ll come round. I hope, if they do, I’ll feel like talking to them.

Keith left a message. He sounded tired.
Peta, I don’t love it but I know it wasn’t easy. You can call me anytime. I hope you do. Take care.

I’ve had some interested looks from Jackie, Jacqui and Trish. My first day back we have lunch.

Trish is curious. ‘You’re with a woman now, Peta.’

Jackie and Jacqui lean in.

Bull by the horns: ‘Yes, her name’s BJ.’

‘We heard, we heard,’ Jackie looks about, ‘you did that,’ she points to my head, which is taped now, ‘while you were having sex in a toilet.’

Ride the bull around the arena: ‘It sounds a little unseemly when you say it like that, but it’s practically true. As of three months ago, I’m no stranger to toilet sex.’

‘I did it in a toilet once. The disabled ones at Flagstaff,’ Trish says.

‘And she’s at uni?’

Ride it one-handed for eight seconds: ‘Meaning she’s young? Yes, she is. And she’s Mark’s boss’s daughter. And Mark has moved in with my sister.’

Jackie chips in, ‘I saw something just like that on
Home and Away.’

‘It was
Neighbours.
Only idiots watch
Home and Away.’

‘Are you calling me an idiot?’ Jackie flicks her ponytail.

‘She didn’t mean that, just that your taste in TV is idiotic.’

Jackie turns to Trish, pointing with her butter knife, ‘Don’t you watch
Prisoner
on Foxtel?’

Bull-riding is easy. And TV is much more interesting than real life.

Saturday morning, mid-July. We’re out of bed late because we spent most of the night watching the Tour de France. Last night it was a mountain stage. The downhill sections made me nauseous; my head swam with the long bends and hairpin turns.

BJ and I are in the kitchen. It’s cold and our breath is foggy.

‘It’s time,’ BJ says.

Darth Vader says 10:45. ‘For what?’

BJ is in front of the fridge. She has a small brown bottle in her hand and a roll of paper towel on the bench beside her.

‘Are you doing it? Or do you want me to? I think you should.’

I bite my lip.

‘Pete, it’s been two weeks since he moved out, you’ve got to start letting go of the guilt. It’ll become nothing but self-indulgence. I saw that on
Dr. Phil.’

Self-indulgence. That sounds right.

‘Dr Phil know much about Euripides, BJ?’

She grins. I take the bottle and tip some oil into my fistful of paper towel. Eucalyptus stings my nose, eyes. I begin. It’s harder than I expected.

‘I’ll help,’ she says. ‘Shit, it stinks.’

Rubbing, inhaling, I do the high parts. Ancient stickytape corners and backs of photos—the bits slide and eventually come off the fridge. My sinuses were never so clear.

‘Back in a sec.’ BJ skips out the kitchen door.

She returns with her hands behind her back.

‘What have you got?’ I reach, but she twists away from me, playful.

‘I thought we could start again.’

She has a photo of us that Loz took on her phone. Us at the museum on the low leather couches where we’d watched the documentary about the discovery and installation of the museum’s whale. There’s so much space inside a whale. You could live in there.

In the photo our heads are leaning together. BJ is in her jacket, I’m in my favourite dress, wraparound, long sleeved, black—every one of my favourite dresses is black. We’re smiling. All dimples and discovery.

BJ sticks the photo on the fridge, right in the middle.

BJ’s Eurythmics poster is where the TV used to be. It covers the entire wall.

‘Aren’t you a little young for the Eurythmics?’ I’d asked as we battled for an hour to hang it. ‘They were on their way out when I was in school.’

‘It used to be Mum’s, from their 1987 tour. It’s the best thing she ever gave me. I’ve never had a big enough space for it.’

I took the bins out the other night and from the footpath, with the lights on in the lounge room, Annie Lennox was lit enormous. Peroxide hair, leather jacket, a pixelated billboard-sized televisual blur. I love it.

Nearly four weeks of living with a woman and things are the same, not the same. The toilet seat stays down. Not the same. I’m replacing the toilet roll. The same. We’re doing dishes but we don’t use the dishwasher—BJ likes to do them by hand. She washes and I dry. I sleep on the same side of the bed as always. BJ is small, so much smaller than Mark, than me. She sleeps on her side and I tuck in behind, wrap an arm around her, listen to her snore, soft, feminine, if that’s possible, and marvel at my luck.

BJ has persuaded me to have a dinner party on Saturday night. She wants to introduce us as an above-the-board couple. We’re testing ourselves on Ruby and Carole Smart.

Ruby is unusually quiet. I call her at work, she’s on the phone all day, and I’m told to call back. Now I know how she felt.

She reaches me on a Friday night. BJ and I are in front of the TV watching a recorded
Dr Who.
I press pause. ‘It’s Ruby’. BJ says she’ll leave me to it and begins her Aeschylus essay.

At the sound of Ruby’s voice, I cry. I wipe my eyes
with the heel of my hand, keep my responses even as she explains she hasn’t been ignoring me on Mark’s behalf. She had things on her mind and work is demanding.

‘I’m sorry I accused you of wanting Mark.’

‘It’s okay, Pete. You’d had a head injury. I’m calling it a mental lapse. Like your denim-overall shorts phase.’ Ruby cackles. She can laugh. She has photos.

‘That’s nothing on going out with Marcus Vidalo. And I don’t have his name tattooed on my bum.’ I’ll fight fire with whatever’s available. ‘So, we’re having a dinner party and it won’t be a party without you.’

‘Aw, shucks,’ she says.

‘No, really. It’s BJ and me and you and Carole Smart. If you’re not there, we’re down to four walls, three people not talking and leftovers for the week. Rube, bring your warmest and your coolest, make sure you eat before you come and don’t wear anything flammable.’ We play a protracted version of the you-hang-up-first game.

Carole Smart is harder to convince. She thinks BJ should keep her room in Northcote.

‘Mum, I don’t need it.’ She squeezes my hand, big smile.

BJ is sitting next to me on the couch, her phone pressed to her ear. She rolls her eyes, a wisecracking teenager expression. She never looks as young as when she’s rolling her eyes.

‘What do you mean, Mum? Her lesbianism might not take? Do you think her body’s going to reject it, like a donor-organ?’ She mouths the word
idiot
at me. ‘She’s not going back to Mark, Mum.’ I move to leave the room but BJ pats the couch. ‘Anyway, she told me if she did I could kill her.’

BJ has permission. She can kill me if I go back to Mark.

‘I don’t know, smother her with a pillow. Steal a garbage truck and run her over. Slip some cyanide into her tea. I’ll Google it. It’ll be easy.’

BJ is headstrong and she has the internet—I’d never cross her. I tune out, think about the menu, and look out the window.

The liquid amber in the front garden is a skeleton, bare, but beautiful. We bagged five loads of leaves, but not before BJ tipped me over into the heap—five-pointed stars of red, brown, yellow and orange, soggy and sticking to us. Under the leaves, we kissed, my hands snaking up inside her T-shirt.

‘See, Mum, you said it,
BJ,
you can do it. See you Saturday, bye.’ BJ switches off her phone and slides it under a cushion on the couch. ‘What are you smiling at?’

We decide to serve three courses. Nothing that can’t be reheated or frozen.

‘I’ll make soup,’ BJ says. ‘Roasted parsnip and carrot.’

‘Parsnip?’ I make a face.

She grabs my chin, shakes it. ‘Trust me, it’s beautiful.’

If I can trust her not to abandon me for someone closer to her age, someone more fun, with more energy and fewer hang-ups, I can rely on her to make soup.

Ruby is first to arrive. The taxi beeps bye-bye when she’s dropped off. I throw an arm around her neck and kiss her on the cheek. She smells of alcohol. I lead her to the lounge room and sit her under the big blue gaze of Annie Lennox.

‘Been to the pub first, Rube? Wish I’d thought of that.’

‘I had a prom-queen at home,’ she says. ‘Got rid of the last one.’

Ruby loves those pre-mixed vodka lolly-waters marketed to under-age drinkers—says they’re quick and painless, like sex on New Year’s Eve.

‘Feel like another?’ I hope she turns me down.

‘No, I’d better wait until the guest of honour arrives. I like the poster. Although, I would have got the big one.’

‘Ruby, you’re my guest of honour. Carole Smart is BJ’s.’ I can’t let it go. ‘How’s Mark?’

‘He’s been hurt.’

‘Everybody has been hurt.’

‘Not me,’ BJ grins.

‘Yes, you too.’ Ruby points at her. ‘Last time I saw you, you had a massive shiner, looked like you’d gone ten rounds with Rocky Balboa.’

A knock at the door.

‘Brace yourselves,’ Ruby says.

I have become a habitual skirt-straightener. Have I developed any more nervous gestures? I want to wait with Ruby where it’s safe. But BJ takes my hand.

‘We’re in this together.’

‘Did you make the soup, Belinda?’

‘Yes,
Carole.’

‘Sorry, BJ. It’s lovely. What is that, ginger?’

‘No. I don’t like ginger.’

‘Oh, Belinda. You love ginger.’

‘So, BJ, tell your mum what you did today,’ Ruby says.

I feel the heat in my cheeks and focus on my soup.

‘Peta, didn’t you say BJ cut her own hair today? That’s what I meant. Not that you’d been going down on each other all afternoon.’

‘Ruby!’ I kick her. She returns my kick. Like Grade Four and Six, and homework and untidy bedrooms. Did so. Did not.

‘Yes, I thought it looked different, homemade…’

‘Homemade? Mum, when it comes to hair, that’s not normally a compliment. I didn’t bake it, you know.’

‘There is no need to raise your voice, Belinda. I mean, BJ.’

‘Did anyone see that documentary about elephants last week?’ I say. ‘Did you know a mother elephant will
breastfeed until their calf is four or five years old?’

‘Well, did you,
Carole?
Did you see it? Or were you competing in the quarter finals of the judging Olympics?’

‘Boy, this is better than TV, isn’t it, Pete?’

‘BJ, can you help me in the kitchen?’

She’s up fast, knocking over the pepper grinder. Slam. Black flecks the tablecloth. I follow her into the kitchen and close the door.

‘Cowboy girl, you might want to tone it down.’

‘I’m having too much fun.’

‘Beej, I need your mother to like me. Us.’

‘She should like you. Us. She says she loves me. She should love who I love and who I am.’

Four pots on the stove. I assemble their contents into bowls. I’m neat in the library and tragic in the kitchen. I don’t get it. I sponge the bench.

‘Not everything you do is art, BJ.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, she’s allowed to not like the same things you do. You wouldn’t want her engaging in your rebellion.’

‘Rebellion?’

‘You’re sticking it up her, aren’t you?’

The kitchen door flies open, hits the wall. The calendar on the back of the door swings on its hook like an over- running pendulum.

‘Just how long do you think you’re going to fucking leave me out there with
her?’
Ruby says.

‘Do you mind not saying
her
like that? She is my mother.’

‘BJ, if she stopped looking about the place like everything was sticky and she was afraid to fucking touch it, I would.’

‘She’s nervous.’

‘It’s like every time she looks at Peta she pictures her face between your legs.’

‘Ruby!’

‘Well, it is. I picture it too, but we’ll all get used to it.’

‘Ruby!’

‘Forget I said anything. Give me that bowl, and that one. Let’s get this over with.’

I trail BJ and Ruby out of the kitchen.

‘Belinda, what have you got there? It looks interesting.’

‘Carole, it’s BJ.’ She serves her mother, dumping curry onto her plate, dispatching a madras splash onto the tablecloth. ‘Sorry, Pete.’

‘How long has it been since you asked me how my day was?’

‘How was your day, Carole?’

‘More like how’s your night going?’ Ruby says. ‘Better than fucken mine, I hope. Peta, can you pour me another? Pour yourself one too. It’s going to be long night.’

‘Ruby, is Mark still living with you?’

‘He’s not
living
with me, Carole. He’s staying at my place until he moves to Chicago next year.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know that,’ I say. How easy it is for him to move on.

‘How long for?’

‘Long enough, BJ.’

‘What is
that
supposed to mean?’ Carole’s arms are folded so hard into her chest, I think she might turn blue.

‘I wouldn’t start defending your daughter now. You’ve been bagging her all night. My sister did not lezify your daughter, but your daughter did steal my sister away from her husband and ruin her life.’

‘She didn’t ruin my life, I did. Sorry BJ, you know what I mean.’

Ruby turns to me.

‘If she hadn’t had her hands all over you on her couch that night, sucking and fucking you,’ she turns, ‘yes, Carole, sucking and fucking,’ back to me, ‘you’d still be with Mark.’

‘We forgot how to love each other.’

‘Yes, you have to work on these things.’ Carole Smart nods and I want to kill her.

‘You’d know, would you?’

‘Yes, Ruby, one divorce behind me, I do know.’

‘I’m into infidelity. It’s all sex and no waiting. Nothing wrong with that. What I want to know is how the fuck they can work on their marriage when you send Mark all over the place?’ Ruby pours herself another. ‘Is it home-time yet?’

She has a sip, bumps the glass back onto the table and starts unbuttoning her shirt. ‘I’m boiling.’ She leans back, concentrating, pushes her shoes off without undoing the laces.

‘Who wants a coffee? BJ makes the best coffee, don’t you, Beej?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Carole, coffee?’ I say. ‘Anyone?’

‘Oh, by all means, Peta, let’s drag this out.’ Ruby’s cheeks are flushed. She rests her head on the back of her chair. ‘Give me two coffees. Come on, Carole, let BJ make you a coffee.’

‘What do you mean I ruined your life?’ BJ says.

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’

‘No, Peta, I don’t know it. You’ve said and not said stuff before.’

‘BJ, I love you. I want to be with you. I’m just… adjusting. My friends have ditched me, nobody calls, nobody emails. I’ve got Ruby and you and Taylor. And there’s something wrong with Ruby tonight.’

‘She’s not normally such a bitch?’

‘Oh, she can be a bitch all right. But she seems to hate Carole as much as Carole hates me.’

BJ reaches for the cups. High shelf. Flash of skin.

‘Carole doesn’t hate you. She hates my choices. And your friends have not deserted you. You have deserted them. I’ve had to adjust, too. My friends think you’re a newer, better version of my mother. Like I’m on some Freudian search for approval.’

‘They think you want to fuck your mother? Have you told them I’m not old enough to be your mother?’

‘Or that I want someone to look after me.’

‘Darling, don’t they know you wear the leather pants in our relationship? Well, if not the pants the jacket.’

BJ’s at the coffee machine, buttons lit, milk hissing a white whirlpool in stainless steel. I’m behind her, my hands on her hips. She backs into me, turns, closes off the steam. I kiss her, taste her tongue.

‘You know,’ Ruby staggers in, bumps against the door frame, looks at it as though she doesn’t know where it came from, ‘there’s this stereotype about homos, that all they do all day is fuck. I come in here to get away from Carole, who seems to be cataloguing what Mark took with him, hoping he won, and I find you two going for it again.’

‘That’s a long sentence for someone as inebriated as
you, Ruby. Sit down, before you fall down. You’re staying in the spare room tonight. There’s no bed—not yet, Mark took it—but the floor is wide and comfortable. We know, don’t we, BJ?’

‘Sure do.’

Ruby is sprawled across the kitchen table. ‘Just as long as you look after her, BJ. She’ll get old and tired before you. She won’t want to go to raves, bounce around on ecstasy all night. She’s pretty conservative, really. She might have wanted babies. He says they were close…’

‘We weren’t that close, Ruby.’

‘Were you really talking about babies?’ BJ says.

‘He was. I was trying not to.’

Four cups of coffee sit abandoned on the bench. The milk in the jug is cooling, the froth turning to foam, unusable.

‘Babies are noisy and smelly.’

‘Not when they’re yours, BJ, it’s different.’

‘I don’t want to talk about this, Rube.’

‘Mind if I sit down?’ Carole sits opposite Ruby. ‘What don’t you want to talk about, Peta? How you left a perfectly good man to take up with a girl half your age who’ll tire of you the moment she comes to her senses?’

‘Come to my senses about what, Carole? About being a lesbian? I’ve never been more in my senses. About Peta? What the fuck do you know about love? You saw Dad off. You haven’t been with anyone since. You don’t know what Peta and I have.’

‘BJ, it’s all right.’

‘It’s not all right, Peta. Drunky here doesn’t trust me, Mum doesn’t take me seriously, you say I’ve ruined your life…’

‘It came out wrong. I was trying to say, it wasn’t you who dragged me away, that I left of my own volition. Sure, maybe this would never have happened. Maybe I’d never be with a woman. Maybe I’d have kids and the whole catastrophe. But I have you. And that is what I want.’

‘But…’

‘No buts. You have not ruined my life.’

‘I’m going home. Belinda, you can come with me, if you need to. Your room is just as you left it.’

‘Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you, Carole? Break them up before they’ve had a chance. She’s not coming back. You might as well pack up your Belinda-Jane memorial.’

‘That’s enough, Ruby. Go to bed.’

‘I’m not moving while she’s still here.’

‘Belinda, I’m still paying the rent at Northcote.’

‘Mum, you can pay the rent for everyone all over town and it won’t make any difference. I’m staying with Peta.’

‘Until her unconscionable little experiment is over and she goes back to her husband. Is that what you want, Belinda? To be some desperate woman’s failed experiment? Another Serena fiasco?’

Serena again.

BJ grits her teeth, ‘I thought you were going home, Mum.’

‘Who the fuck is Serena?’ Ruby’s head is in her arms. The question echoes onto the tabletop.

‘I’m going.’ Carole Smart stands up, holds out her hand, ‘Belinda?’

‘It’s BJ, Mum, BJ. I’ll walk you out.’

‘Peta, I don’t have any belief in this.’ She gestures, a hand in the air. For a moment I think she’s talking about
the coffee machine. ‘I want you to leave my daughter alone.’

‘Get out, Mum.’

‘Yeah, fuck off, Carole!’

‘Ruby, it’s okay. Sit back down.’

The front door slams.

‘Wow! What a way to send off a month. Goodbye July, hello hell. Let’s do it all again next week. I’ll bring the pitchforks and you two can come as you are.’ Purple teeth, tongue and lips, Ruby slides off her chair onto the floor. Sitting opposite each other, BJ and I laugh until we cry.

Top Ten Things I Learned About Cycling Without Ever Riding A Bike:

1. BJ says unless you’re both stopped at a light, a cyclist won’t hear the abuse you’re hurling.
   
2. BJ has a ONE LESS HEAD INJURY sticker on her helmet. She’s sold me. If I’m ever forced to ride a bike I’ll wear a helmet.
   
3. Tram tracks, drain covers, and white lane markings are all death in the rain.
   
4. BJ carries spare socks for wet days.
   
5. Proper cyclists don’t wear underpants under their shorts.
   
6. The word for the strange metal clip under their shoes is
   cleats
   not
   clits.
   
7. Unless you’re in the Tour de France never, ever, wear yellow bike shorts.
   
8. BJ reckons flat tyres only happen when you have the tools to fix them. I said that sounds like madness. She compromises—carries a spare tube, no tyre levers.
   
9. If you’re real about your cycling you don’t ride through red lights. You don’t need to give drivers, pedestrians, the cops and Neil Mitchell any more reason to hate cyclists.
   
10. Cycling makes you good at sex. She’s either made that up or she’s proof.